Page:Plays by Jacinto Benavente - Second series (IA playsbyjacintobe00bena).pdf/18

 they any conspicuous emotional quality which imparts to them coherence, or lends them unity. The detail has been related, composed, if one will, with exceptional adroitness; nevertheless, the effect arises chiefly from the absolute veracity and minute photographic property of the incidents themselves, by cumulation, as they follow each other in the bustling sequence of a provincial holiday. The material insinuates its significance without interference or interpretation upon the part of the playwright. The living scene appears before the spectator, and he comes to participate in it in so many ways that he is taken off his guard, until he acquires at last a sort of citizenship in the town of Moraleda—that abode of conventional morality—whose people he seems to know casually, as upon the street, or at the café, some fairly well, perhaps, even thoroughly, while there are others whom he scarcely remembers at all. By far the most negative and corrosive of his works, "The Governor's Wife," conjBrmed the misapprehension of Benavente at one time prevalent, as a purely destructive, maliciously clever writer.

"Princess Bebé" and "Autumnal Roses," which complete the volume, on the other hand are serious dramas, of positive content. The former, published in 1905, but withheld from the stage until 1909, is a work composed by the author peculiarly to please himself. "Sometimes I say what I think, sometimes I have regard for the opinion of others." Certain resemblances between events in the play and others not yet forgotten at the Spanish Court tempered in some degree the warmth of its reception when acted by Maria Guerrero and Fernando Díaz de Mendoza during their tenancy of the Teatro Español, although this, indeed, was not surprising when it is considered that the initial performances took place at what was then, to all intents and purposes, the National Court Theatre. "Princess Bebé" is the embodiment of the aspirations and ebullience of youth, boundless in energy, yet tormented with uncertainties and misgivings, the natural hesitations of the mind which has not yet found itself. As a painter of manners, Benavente may here be found at his best. Few plays are so various or contain so much, few disseminate an equal atmosphere of breeding or display like perception of the futile, exacerbated sentimentalities of the prostitute, the criminal, and the